13 entries categorized "Branding"

Back in the early days of the presidential campaign I wrote a column here about the devastation former California governor Pete Wilson wreaked on the Republican Party when he awakened the sleeping Latino giant with his crude campaign against immigration. You would think the rest of the GOP would have learned from his mistake — the once-dominant California Republican Party is such a shell of its former self that there is literally no possibility a Republican will be elected to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer. (Both remaining candidates are Democrats.) If this year’s turnout among California Latinos is high, it might get worse.

Republican leaders knew about this. The “autopsy” they did after 2012 was very explicit about the party’s need to reach out to Hispanic communities or risk losing the presidency for the foreseeable future. That report famously observed:

If Hispanic Americans perceive that a GOP nominee or candidate does not want them in the United States (i.e. self-deportation), they will not pay attention to our next sentence. It does not matter what we say about education, jobs or the economy; if Hispanics think we do not want them here, they will close their ears to our policies. In the last election, Governor Romney received just 27 percent of the Hispanic vote. Other minority communities, including Asian and Pacific Islander Americans,also view the Party as unwelcoming. President Bush got 44 percent of the Asian vote in 2004; our presidential nominee received only 26 percent in 2012.

The base wasn’t having it. When Donald Trump came along and articulated their rage at Latino immigrants, any hope of such outreach was abandoned. And it looks like they may have committed the same fatal error that Pete Wilson made 22 years ago in California.

Last Friday night, ace Nevada reporter Jon Ralston sounded the alarm: Latino early voting in Clark County (which includes Las Vegas) was about to go through the roof. Turnout had been beating expectations throughout the early voting period, but on the last night there were long lines at voting places in predominantly Latino areas and by law they had to hold the polls open to ensure everyone would be able to vote. At the end of the night Ralston declared that Donald Trump’s hopes of winning Nevada — which is crucial to his electoral college math — had been dashed. The Latino vote had surged beyond all expectations and if the polling was even close to correct the vast majority were voting for Hillary Clinton.

More stories of massive Latino turnout emerged over the weekend from all over the country. Florida is showing a huge surge, up 75 percent from 2012, with more than a third being folks who haven’t voted before, a group that may not be showing up as “likely voters” in opinion polling. According to the New York Times:

In Orlando, voters waited up to 90 minutes on Saturday at one early voting location at a library, some spending the time taking pictures of one another in front of candidates’ signs. Parking lots for a quarter-mile surrounding the area were packed.

Mrs. Clinton clearly carried the day there. Jon-Carlos Perez, 30, an independent voter and a concrete laborer originally from Puerto Rico, said he cast his vote for Mrs. Clinton in part because “she’s not an idiot like Trump.”

Alyssa Perez, 23, a doctoral student at the University of Central Florida who voted at another busy location in Orlando, said she considered Mr. Trump to be “anti-women, anti-Hispanic, anti-Muslim” and said, “I don’t want to live in a country where there is a president who has those kinds of views.”

Canvassing on Saturday morning in North Miami, Mary Kay Henry, the president of the Service Employees International Union, and a handful of local members focused on households, many of them Haitian or Hispanic, with an infrequent voting history. But nearly every resident who answered their door assured her they had already voted.

In Arizona, Latino voters have the dual motivation of voting out the notorious Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, one of Trump’s major endorsers. Democrats there have a strong get-out-the-vote effort with a coalition of 14 organizations mobilizing the community. Latino early vote has reportedly doubled from 2012.

In North Carolina the early vote is up 75 percent; it’s up 25 percent in Colorado. Most pollsters will admit that surveys that don’t sample Spanish-speaking households — as most do not — are almost assuredly undercounting Clinton’s share of support.

If these communities continue to turn out on Election Day, it could signal what analyst Ronald Brownstein described this way on Twitter:

Not predicting but if HRC loses OH/IA & even NH/MI yet wins with CO/VA/NV/Fl/NC we will have fast forwarded US politics 10 years in 1 cycle

— Ronald Brownstein (@RonBrownstein) November 5, 2016

Much of the commentary credits Trump’s racist message with motivating these communities, and there’s no doubt that has galvanized people. As Sen. Lindsey Graham has put it, “Trump deserves the award for Hispanic turnout. He did more to get them out than any Democrat has ever done.”

But as a Monday report in the New York Times explains further, But that’s not the whole story. Unlike the Republicans, the Democrats have been working with the communities for years, knowing very well that this is a young demographic that’s set to grow substantially over the next few years.

[T]hey set out to reach them in their communities, talking to them in their language, with the belief that touching them in the most personal way possible, at churches, bodegas, bus stops and nail salons, was also the most persuasive. And the effort was focused on more than registering potential voters. Democrats sought to make electoral politics part of the daily conversation for a demographic that had until now largely sat on the sidelines.

The Clinton campaign targeted Latinas in particular:

Starting in Nevada, the campaign convened groups of women to discuss issues that were important to them, like health care and education. After each meeting, the women were asked to write down the names and contacts of five other women who might support Mrs. Clinton. The program, called “Mujeres in Politics,” was deemed such a success that the campaign replicated it in Colorado and other states with large Hispanic populations.

Clinton’s campaign has struck a bold stance on immigration policy, in stark contrast to any previous candidates for president, including Barack Obama. Clinton is arguably to Obama’s left on issues of undocumented immigration and deportations, and has said she will make immigration reform a priority for her first 100 days in office. One of her most effective ads was this one featuring a young girl whose parents may face deportation:

Most of these immigrants are hard working folks, doing manual labor or service jobs, people who are also benefiting from unionization drives (which don’t come easy) and a helping hand from government on health care and education. They contribute massively to our economy, our culture and our society. All those pundits and analysts who been wringing their hands over the plight of the angry Trump voters and the Democrats’ alleged abandonment of the working class don’t even seem to see these working-class people.

There are millions of these newly energized voters all over the country and they are voting in vast numbers. Between Trump’s threats and Clinton’s outreach, after this election they will very likely be Democrats with a lot of clout in a party that has an agenda that might actually be able to deliver for them. If Trump’s voters can cool down and clear their heads, they might realize they’d be better off standing with these folks than against them.

Alexandre Hohagen's career to date has focused on two crucial elements of the marketing equation: digital media and young Hispanic consumers.

Over the last decade, he served as managing director of Google's operations in Brazil and vp of Latin America and U.S. Hispanics for Facebook before stepping down in 2015. Now he and his business partner, former Isobar global chairman Pedro Cabral, want to help plot the future of the market they know best by creating the ad industry's first Hispanic digital holding company.

In March, the partners acquired Miami-based agency Nobox. The 15-year-old shop currently works with clients including Netflix, PlayStation, Marriott, Royal Caribbean and Volkswagen, but Hohagen told Adweek that his long-term plans have only begun to take shape.

"I love to build things," he said, "And I really see this as a much bigger than Nobox. We want to build a holding company made of independent agencies focused on creative, technology and performance for the Latin American and U.S. Hispanic audiences."

Hohagen aims to address a very real problem for brands: a growing group of Hispanic consumers who aren't properly served by the industry's biggest agencies. "What I see is that [these consumers] are so relevant to the general market," he said, "But very few local agencies understand U.S. Hispanics. When we consider the online world, it's even worse."

The newly appointed Nobox CEO plans to use the insights he gathered working for two of the world's most powerful tech companies to better manage brands' relationships with widely varied groups of young Hispanics. He noted, for example, that a given brand's approach when trying to reach consumers of Mexican descent should differ from campaigns targeted to Puerto Ricans.

"Many clients who understand the importance of having a different set of communicatons to target Hispanics are working with specialist agencies," he said. "What we want to offer, for a Ford or an American Airlines, is the opportunity to speak with Hispanics in both Latin America and the U.S."

In shaping his company, Hohagen plans to use his experience at Google and Facebook to better navigate the agency world. "We know how many times [Sir Martin] Sorell has referred to Facebook and Google as 'frenemies,'" he said, "But on the other hand, they created a lot of opportunities for agencies, which gives me an interesting perspective on how to work with those clients. Look how many people left agencies to work at Facebook. I'm just doing the reverse."

Regarding his approach to better utilizing those agencies' existing resources, he said, "They've been talking with clients about creative. Now we are trying to talk about business objectives before creative. When I think about acquiring more companies, it's to help them in the execution of ideas, strategy and the consultancy part [of the equation], which is in my mind the model we want to pursue."

Hohagen and Cabral are already working on the next round of their long-term strategy; they have identified one agency based in Brazil and one based in Mexico as the second and third potential partners in their planned holding company.

"We are an alternative to the big groups who are trying to acquire agencies," he said. "But small, promising agencies want to work with someone like us, grow their businesses and then think about being acquired by the big groups."

It's warm, school's winding down and diving into a book isn't what most children have in mind when it comes to how they plan to spend the lazy days of summer. But a group of Latina bloggers, most of them moms, want to change this.

The group has launched an online effort called Latinas 4 Latino Literature (LL4L) to get more Hispanic kids interested in reading. And unlike in other summer reading programs, these women are turning to what they know best -- the online community -- to introduce young readers and their families to literature.

That's no small feat. Walk into a Walmart or a Barnes and Noble, and you'll be hard-pressed to find an English-language book geared toward Latino kids -- or even a translation of a Spanish-language children's book.

And while young Latinos can certainly enjoy mainstream classics like Judy Blume's Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, kids really respond and fall in love with reading when they see themselves in the characters, when they can recognize their doting grandmas and their crazy-but-lovable families on the pages of the books they pick up.

L4LL has its origins in a New York Times article last December on the lack of Latino characters in young adult literature. That story struck a nerve in the Latina blogging community, said Viviana Hurtado, a blogger with a Yale Ph.D. in literature, and one of the founders of L4LL.

Chat rooms and email threads lit up with messages from exasperated Hispanics after the article ran, lamenting the state of affairs it described. But instead of simply fuming, Hurtado and several other women set out to change things. They founded L4LL to clamor for more Hispanic authors and increase literacy among Latinos.

"Keeping Spanish alive and keeping connections to our culture alive are important, but that's a struggle," Hurtado said. "There's an untapped consumer market in Hispanic readers who want to read more books published by Latinos."

And while Hurtado doesn't think publishing houses have done enough to bring Latino authors to market, she and the other bloggers are turning to the web to bring what is available to young Hispanic readers. L4LL recently kicked off a summer reading program that provides age-appropriate Latino-authored book suggestions to families. Parents can order them online or download them as ebooks. There are also Hispanic bloggers and up-and-coming authors who have taken to the web to promote their own content.

The group is partnering with Google and may offer some free reading content through Google Education. They also have free downloadable worksheets and reading lists available in English and Spanish.

The program will incorporate everything from "Twitter parties" that revolve around a specific hashtag to Google Hangouts with Latino authors. L4LL has already hosted a "blog hop" that featured 20 Latino authors on 20 Latina blogs.

"Latinos want to become more fully integrated into the American community, they want to, but they don't know how," Hurtado said. So L4LL has followed the Latino community to a place where they feel comfortable: the internet.

Connecting isn't as easy as speaking Spanish or English or both, she cautioned. It's more about understanding where the community members come from and respecting them. Latinos were courted by both parties in the last U.S. presidential election, she noted -- but many felt disillusioned by how they were portrayed in the media, and they turned to the digital space to regain some control of the narrative.

Using their web skills, the women behind L4LL are now hoping to bring a similar sense of empowerment to their children by opening them to a world of literature with protagonists that look, speak and act like them.

"When there is identification going on because you recognize a last name or see a skin color that looks familiar...there's a connection and an identification established," Hurtado said. "If that is one of the inroads that is going to help us access this community and get kids hooked on reading, we're going full-throttle."

Most of their customers have actually been ordering in Spanish all along.

At the very least English-speakers learned to say “por favor” during those 4 years of High School Spanish Classes. Now it’s time to get their money’s worth for all their hard work, all $5.00 worth of it.

Most English-speakers who have visited Latin America have had to learn the basic survival Spanish phrase: “Una Cerveza Por Favor.”

If someone is able to say “Yo quiero Taco Bell” or “Hasta la vista, Baby,” then they will be able to pull this one off as well.

Because people are NOT speaking in English either when they order BibimBap, Pho Tai, Baba Ganoush, Tacos, Enchiladas, Salsa or Tortillas.

The campaign is geared towards Spanish-dominant Latinos, Latino-philes and cheapskates; so most of those “boycotting” Pizza Patrón were not even targeted to begin with.

You don’t want to order in Spanish? No problem; just pay the $5 for your Pepperoni Pizza, no one is stopping you.

In case you've been living under a rock lately, here's some background on this:

Pizza Patrón has launched campaign that has sparked controversy because it encourages the public to place their orders in Spanish. The "Ordena en español y llévate gratis una pizza grande de pepperoni" (Order in Spanish and get a large pepperoni pizza free) campaign, will run from 5:00-8:00 p.m. on June 5. Pizza Patrón plans to give away 80,000 pies during the three-hour window of the promotion. Free pizzas are limited to one per customer while supplies last. Despite the fact that the campaign ads explicitly state how to order a pizza in Spanish using the phrase "Pizza, por favor" (Pizza, please), for some of those who are not Spanish-speakers, the promotion appears to be politically incorrect. Around 70 percent of Pizza Patron's customers are Hispanic and the majority of the chain's 104 stores are located in areas with heavy concentrations of Latinos. From the beginning, the brand has been recognized for its 'fresh-dough' pizza, its low prices and its trademark "friendly, bicultural service."

Pizza Patrón’s brand manager, explains,“If you don’t speak Spanish, come on in. We’ll give you the phrase and make sure everyone that shows up walks away with a pizza.” Anyone can say, 'por favor.' Some individuals are boycotting the eatery over the promotion. Some people say that now that they have to speak Spanish they don't want anything from Pizza Patrón, even thought neither of the words in the company name were of English origin.

Today Edelman, the world’s largest independent public relations firm, launches Marketing to the Modern Family – a new study with insights about marketing to the family of the future that revealed surprising findings, including more than a third of dads feel that they are now acting in the role of a traditional “mom.”

From skill set vs. gender roles, to happily married vs. happily unmarried, the study revealed the chief purchasing officer in families is changing. Based on the insights below, a small spend and “test and learn” approach from marketers can optimize future success.

•Traditional Becomes Traditionall: Families headed by gay, lesbian and single parents become the new traditional family – 66 percent of gay dads are more likely to buy products that have ads reflecting their sexual orientation. Marketers need to look at everything from imagery to language and ensure they are communicating to a full spectrum of audiences.

•Gender Surrender: Economic pressures and blended family models have redefined individual roles within the family – skill sets have replaced gender, and 62 percent of moms and 54 percent of dads feel that parenting roles will be redefined away from the traditional “mom and dad” roles of the past. This creates a new opportunity for marketers to think in terms of skill set versus gender, opening up the entire family as a target.

•Democratization of the Family: Sixty-eight percent of parents say that children have influence on family purchasing decisions, and grandmothers are playing an increased role. The power of the purse is equally divided among its publics. It’s not simply a “mommy” world, so marketers will need to change their lexicon accordingly.

•The Rise of the Involved Dad: Dads are demanding work-life balance – and doing much more at home. Dads report their responsibility for taking care of kids has more than doubled since their childhood. Marketers must acknowledge dad’s role in the family, rather than a “men as cavemen” mentality.

“While the essence of parenting hasn’t changed, the look and make-up of the American family has seen a huge shift – from more moms in the workforce to a rise in multigenerational households,” said Christina Smedley, Global Chair of Edelman’s Consumer Marketing Practice. “Marketing to the Modern Family found that, while moms are still a critical audience for brands, changing dynamics have created a new set of rules and audiences that marketers should consider when targeting the family of today.”

The study, which was commissioned in August 2011, included in-depth interviews with 2,482 consumers among a cross-section of today’s modern family: single parents, working moms, gay partners, multicultural heads of households and grandparents. Questions were influenced by a panel of experts who reflect the modern family through their own demographics, and with expertise in key areas including health and wellness, technology, finance and pop culture.

Since 2005, I’ve been telling you about my friend Ed Rueda and his dream of making NASCAR an important part of Latinos' sports realm. In 2006 I made my case on why that would be a wise investment. 2007 was the year when Ed’s Rueda Racing was born.

What was only a dream in one man’s mind back then, now in early 2009 has become a full fledged reality:Rueda Racing is fully established and this year will field a team in the NASCAR Camping World West Series, the NASCAR Western States Late Model Series, and a satellite team in the USAC Western States Series.

Not only does Rueda Racing has a diverse roster of drivers in Carlos Contreras, Mike Gallegos, Quintin Crye and Darin Martinez-Stahl, but they have landed a deal with the producers behind Wife Swap and the Two Coreys (RDF USA) to air a docu-drama television show highlighting the behind the scenes of Rueda Racing (March – November , 2009).

Combine this with a road show that will put your brand face to face with hundreds of thousands of potential Hispanic customers, and tell me what is there not to like about this deal…

Interested? Email me for more information on how to get your brand on Ed’s Cars. You’ll see that ROIs like these are scarce, to say the least.

The biggest request other than adding brands has been to make local versions with local logos. I've taken this to heart and with the help of Jamie McKeown and Juan Tornoe - http://hispanictrending.net -- I've managed to get these two versions going so far. I'm hoping to get more up as soon as possible, especially because unfortunately the idea is being copied without my permission, so if you would like to see another locale and would be willing to help collect logos, please be in touch.

Finally, I just wanted to thank everyone for all their support. This has been amazing fun so far and has succeeded beyond my wildest expectations. If you have ideas for the site or want to see additional brands or regions added, please don't hesitate to ask (you can go through the site or reply to this email).

I will also be adding some more features in the coming weeks, so watch out.

Shakira and the dilemmas of going globalTo sing in Spanish or in English? That was the tricky choice facing Shakira and her record company, Sony BMG, as they pondered how to follow the Colombian pop star's 2001 global chart-topping, 13m-selling album, “Laundry Service”. That album, Shakira's first (mostly) in English, was a dramatic entry into the lucrative English-language pop market for a singer who had sold some 12m of her four previous albums, all in Spanish. Having penned her first song at the age of eight and released her first album aged 13, earning an estimated $30m even before “Laundry Service”, Shakira found herself described as Latin America's biggest star and, by some wags, Colombia's greatest legal export.

“Laundry Service” put Shakira's commercial achievements on a par with—perhaps even ahead of—those of other leading pop stars who have lately crossed-over from Spanish to English, such as Ricky Martin, Enrique Iglesias and Gloria Estefan. But how to build on that triumph? “The industry would have liked me to put out another English album six months after 'Laundry Service',” says Shakira, now 28. “But I can't make music like hamburgers.” Sony had little choice but to wait for her to deliver in her own time—and in the language, or as it turned out, languages, of her choice. This year—several years late, from the industry's point of view—Shakira is releasing not one but two new albums. And, even more contrary to industry conventional wisdom, the first, just out, is in Spanish—“Fijación Oral volumen 1”—with an English-language album, “Oral Fixation volume 2”, held back until November.

This strategy, Shakira concedes, is a gamble, albeit one for which she is happy to accept responsibility. “I like risk and challenges... If it goes wrong, I'm to blame.” In an industry in which established artists are steadily grabbing power from the big corporations (whose main defence is to try to “manufacture” a stream of easy-to-manage identikit boy and girl bands, or turn many a non-entity into a “Pop Idol”) Shakira is said to exercise tighter than average control over all aspects of her career. In interviews she may attribute her decisions to “irrational impulses” and “feminine intuition”, but industry insiders say she has an impressive grasp of business logic. As her career approached a crucial stage in the mid-1990s, for example, she teamed up with Emilio Estefan (husband of Gloria), the Miami-based king- (and queen-) maker of Latin pop. She has always written her own material: when she decided to enter the English-language market, she learnt English well enough to write songs in it, and thereby ensured that she retained control over her music. She also changed her image ahead of the launch of “Laundry Service”, with a striking new blonde look—though, typically, she denies this had any business motive, saying instead that it was simply the result of her natural brown hair having become “like a jail... I didn't want to be buried with it.”

So what is the business logic behind this year's belated two-album release strategy? After all, there was a high price to pay for taking so long to launch a new album. The momentum created by “Laundry Service” has been largely lost, says one Sony executive, so when it came to market her new work the firm had “to assume it was starting from scratch again”. On the other hand, he concedes, “you can't rush an act like Shakira”—whose work has even been praised for its “innocent sensuality” in an essay by the novelist Gabriel García Márquez (a fellow Colombian).

Releasing the Spanish album first had two main goals. One was to re-establish her roots in the Latin marketplace. “When Hispanics heard I was writing in English, they probably thought I was leaving for ever,” she says. Certainly, back home her fellow Colombians grumble about Shakira having “abandoned” her middle-class origins for the Latin elite based around Miami and the Bahamas—she has homes in both—and “speaking Spanish with an Argentine accent” since she started to date Antonio de la Rua, the son of a former Argentine president. Two English albums in a row might have been too many, not just in Colombia.

A new study unveiled today by marketing consultantcy Yankelovich Inc. reveals key findings among Hispanic consumers such as frustrations with marketing and advertising practices, language preferences and a decline in brand loyalty.

According to the MONITOR Multicultural Marketing Study, which tracks shifting patterns among Latino and African-American consumers, 53 percent of Hispanics say that they are "extremely concerned about the practices and motives of marketers and advertisers." In addition, 50 percent of Latinos say that very little, if any, of the marketing and advertising that they see has any relevance to them.

However, that doesn't signal a lack of importance paid to advertising. In another finding in the study, 72 percent of Latinos say they would like to see more television programming or other commercials aimed specifically for them. The study also reveals that 88 percent of Hispanics wish more financial institutions would offer products tailored to their needs.

While Hispanics are still considered a brand-loyal group, they have been adopting a more flexible approach to new offerings. According to the study, 73 percent of Hispanics say they "like to try different brands once in a while," but 58 percent agree that it is “risky to buy a brand you are not familiar with.”

When it comes to language, marketers and ad executives will have to manage to communicate with the consumer in both English and Spanish. According to the study, nearly 40 percent of Latinos prefer Spanish, 41 percent prefer English, and 20 percent like both. Whatever the preference, the study found that 65 percent of Hispanics feel that their native language is an important aspect of their culture and tradition that is important to preserve.

More interesting facts on how Hispanics are making their way into the U.S. society:

June 2004

The service and financial sectors are expected to show the largest growth in Hispanic-owned companies, according to HispanTelligence® analysis.

Currently, the service sector leads all other industry segments in overall concentration and number of Hispanic-owned firms. And from 2000 to 2010, a total of 846,048 new firms are expected to enter the sector, raising its overall concentration from 48 percent to 50 percent. That increase is projected to account for more than half of the total increase in Hispanic-owned firms in the coming years.